


Better

by sodium_amytal



Category: Moral Orel
Genre: AU (sort of), Clay/Putty if you squint, Gen, Post-Canon, villain redemption arc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-19
Updated: 2018-12-19
Packaged: 2019-09-22 22:58:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17068787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sodium_amytal/pseuds/sodium_amytal
Summary: Post-canon. After the events of “Honor,” a near-death experience forces Clay to become his best self.





	Better

**Author's Note:**

> This was a tricky one to write, but I hope it's at least halfway believable. It started out, as all my writing does, as a ship fic (Clay/Putty), but as it went on, that didn't seem "fit" the tone of the story. So the ending hints at it, and that's the best I can do here. I ended up writing my first gen-fic! Maybe I'll do an AU and write the Clay/Putty fic I originally wanted.

God is nothing like Clay expected. The glowing shape before him must be God; in its presence Clay feels a certain awe reserved for the divine, an intuition that he stands before a force beyond the universe.

"Is this Heaven?" Clay asks, looking at the titanic void of nothingness surrounding him. "It's not as… exciting as the Bible made it sound." As Clay floats closer in the bottomless eternity, God begins to take shape into a human form. Blinding light radiates from Him, and Clay can decipher no facial features, no hair, no big white beard. God, it seems, is a department store mannequin.

"If this were Heaven, you would know." God's voice is deep and booming, but there's a soothing quality to it as well.

"Purgatory?" Were the Catholics right?

"No, no, I only needed a space in which to speak to you with no distractions. We have to talk." In the years since Clay's been married, he's learned those four words never precede anything good.

God reaches behind His back, as though reaching into some invisible pocket of the universe, and withdraws a large indescript tome. The universe's phone book.

"How did I get here?" Clay asks.

God doesn't look up from the pages when He answers: "Car crash. A pity and a shame, but at least no one else was hurt."

Clay recalls the accident in reverse motion, each image pulling forth the previous one from some great depths. He remembers flying through a white tunnel, remembers the sounds of smashing glass. The world's up and down swapping places. The screaming skid on the ice. The sudden flash of oncoming headlights. Staggering out of Forghetty's and into the car. Swallowing down his fifth scotch on the rocks. The empty barstool beside him.

Clay gasps. "I'm dead?"

"That's the sort of thing that happens when a person drives drunk."

So God's judging him now? Well, Clay supposes that's fair. God does have the right to do such a thing, being the Almighty Judge and all.

God finds what He's looking for in the book. "A-ha! Here we go. Clayton Middle-initial Puppington. Mayor of Moralton, Statesota. My, my, you're… quite the character." God's finger moves down the page as He reads, and Clay finds this disquieting. "You honored your mother—a little too much, perhaps—but not your father. You mistreated and neglected your wife, your sons—"

"Hey, two of those kids aren't even mine!"

God continues reading, unbothered by Clay's interjections. "You were unfaithful in body and spirit, you worshipped the false god of alcohol—You shot your own son?" At this, God would have probably removed His reading glasses in a dramatic way if He were wearing any. Instead, He raises His head from the book, and although He has no eyes to speak of, Clay senses a very contemptuous gaze coming from Him. Clay feels the nonexistent walls closing in and a vague sense that this isn't going well.

"It was an accident!"

"My word, you're a monster!" God looks at the book again. "And that's only the highlight reel! We'd be here for ages if I went over all your sins like some holy tax accountant." He shakes His head and snaps the book shut. The tome disappears in a puff of celestial dust.

"Heaven's not out of the question, though, right?" Clay asks. Sure, he's had a few world-class fuck-ups (who hasn't?), but above all he has been a good father. Certainly God sees the lessons Clay has taught Orel, the many Lost Commandments he has upheld.

God laughs a deep bellow that seems to shake the universe. "Good heavens, no! You've been terrible. Just awful. What part of 'you're a monster' didn't you understand?"

And Clay begins to laugh too, not in jest but in utter disbelief and terror, because none of those things could be true. "But I went to church!" he manages through his laughter. "I read the Bible! I raised my son to pray and worship You!"

"And a fine lot of good it did if you never learned to be kind. When you were reading the Bible, did you skip over all the Jesus stuff?"

Clay stares at the Lord, dumbfounded, and convinced this must be some horrible dream. Only in a nightmare would Clay be rejected and criticized by the Almighty. "So then who in Moralton would actually make it into Heaven?"

"Your sons, of course. Orel has sinned, but he is a child, still learning his way in the world. His intentions are good, and his heart is pure. Stephanie as well—

"The atheist who runs the sex shop?" Clay wails, then, realizing his mistake: "Uh, not that I would know what kind of place she runs, of course."

Somehow, despite not actually having eyes, God fucking  _side-eyes_  him. "You care more about puritanical ideals than how a person actually treats others. Whether Stephanie believes in me or not is irrelevant. Her sexual proclivities are also irrelevant. She's kind to people—your son Orel among them—and she makes the world a better place by being in it. In his own way, so does Reverend Putty—"

"Oh, you've  _got_  to be kidding me!" For starters, Putty has sex out of wedlock (or at least wants to) and has lustful thoughts on the regular. A realization hits Clay: "Was it the…  _thing_  I had with Daniel? Is that what's keeping me out of Heaven? That I had impure thoughts about… a man?"

God sighs the way a dog does when it's tired. "You're not listening, Clay. It's your lack of kindness, not who you love—"

"Hey, I didn't  _love_  him!"

"True, you were an abusive, self-destructive alcoholic who had no love for anyone, not even your own flesh and blood. There is not one single person who is better off for having known you."

It's rare to hear something that makes you see yourself in a completely different way. Terror and a paralyzing sense of truth wash through Clay. If all this is true—and it must be, because God only speaks the truth—then Clay has wasted his entire life. Well, shit, who is he to argue?

Clay truly cries for the first time since his mother died. He didn't know he could feel anything here in this endless void, but his spirit is filled with unbearable grief, grief that does not pour out with his tears but overflows inside of him.

( _He's right He's right oh God He's right I destroy everything I touch)_

God makes an aggrieved noise, like Clay's making an ass of himself. "However, I believe in forgiveness and second chances."

Hope leaps in Clay's chest.

"Maybe I return your spirit to your body," God continues, "and give you your life back. Maybe this time, love thy neighbor as thyself. Maybe this time, love not in word or with the tongue, but in deed and truth."

"But it's hard!"

"Of course it is! If it were easy, everyone would do it. But it's not impossible."

"You don't give everyone a second chance, so what's so special about me if I'm such a monster?"

"You're not so much looking a gift-horse in the mouth as you are cleaning its teeth," God says. "I work in mysterious ways, remember? And every act of kindness is worthwhile."

Clay's mind totters. God thinks he's  _worth it._

Clay shakes his head, trying to clear it. This offer has  _too good to be true_  written all over it. "If I take your deal, what's the catch? I start all over again with no memory of who I am or that we even had this conversation? Or you cut my lifespan down to five years?"

"You're confusing me for Satan," God says with a smidge of offense. "There are no caveats in my offer. Honestly, it's kind of a no-brainer: go back to your life and be nice, or stay dead and go to Hell."

When He puts it like that, Clay seems like an idiot for thinking it over as long as he has. "What's Hell like? I mean, just to see what's waiting for me if I screw up."

"You don't want to see it."

"Oh, come on! I need to! Otherwise, what's my motivation?"

"Your  _motivation_? Isn't bringing joy and happiness to the lives of those around you enough?"

"Do  _you_  have me confused with someone else?" Clay wonders. Somewhere in that giant book God was reading must be all the gritty details about Clay's upbringing.

With a wave of His hand, God creates a crater beneath them, something akin to a portal. What Clay sees within it are living nightmares never meant for mortals' eyes.

"You wanted to see it," God says.

Inside that portal is a universe of horror, somehow more hellish than the eternal lake of fire promised to all sinners.

"No!" Clay shouts, because he can't really be seeing any of this. It's madness. Complete and incomprehensible madness.

"I warned you," God reminds him.

"Send me back! Send me back!" Clay begs. "I'll take the deal!" God closes the portal as easily as He opened it. Clay is shaking, his sanity trembling. "Tell me how to change! How do I stop being this… person that I am?"

"Be kind. Don't punish Orel with violence or lead him astray by twisting my words to justify prejudice or self-hatred. Spend time with your children teaching them a new skill or doing things they like to do. Have an open, honest conversation with your wife that isn't all about you. Realize that life isn't all about misery and doing unpleasant things. There is plenty of goodness if you choose to see it. If your marriage is so unsatisfying, get a divorce and find someone who cares for you. Maybe Coach Stopframe will give you a second chance, too."

Clay cannot believe what he's hearing. This is not the God Clay thought he knew, but He must be God all the same.

"The Ten Commandments still hold up, you know," God says. "Even after all these years. " He touches Clay's forehead with a hand made of brilliant light, and that's where Clay blacks out.

* * *

Clay awakens—as though from a deep sleep—in the hospital with Orel and Dr. Potterswheel standing over him. "We lost you for a while there, buddy," Potterswheel says, like he's talking about a game of hide-and-seek instead of a flatline.

Clay's legs are lumpy shapes underneath the bedclothes, but he can't look beneath and see the damage. "How bad is it?"

"Actually, you were tremendously lucky," Potterswheel says. "You're a little bruised and banged up, but nothing that won't heal after a couple days."

God must have healed Clay's worse injuries before the paramedics ever arrived. Driven by morbid curiosity, Clay takes a peek underneath the sheets. Sure enough, his legs are unbroken. There's a steady ache crawling through his body, and a sense that he'll be very sore in the days to come, but that seems to be the extent of his pain.

"You'll have to stay overnight for observation. Just to be on the safe side. But from the looks of that wreck, it's nothing short of a miracle that you'll be walking out of here tomorrow morning." Potterswheel leaves the room, and now it's just Clay and Orel and the steady beep of hospital machinery.

Clay looks at Orel, who's watching him with an indecipherable look. "Where's your mother?"

Orel shrugs. "At home."

But she isn't here, and that's what speaks to Clay in this moment.

"Why did you come?"

"It seemed like the right thing to do," Orel says.

Of course that's why. Orel would never pass up an opportunity to do the right thing. It's something ingrained in him that Clay doesn't understand. This innate goodness clearly didn't come from Bloberta or Clay himself.

Clay considers how to respond. God's words echo in his head:  _Maybe this time, love not in word or with the tongue, but in deed and truth._

"Well, I'm glad you're here," Clay tells his son.

Orel lifts an eyebrow, suspicious.

"Orel, you're not gonna believe it, but I met God!"

Orel's expression changes, like he does not, in fact, believe Clay but wants to see where this goes.

"He said you, your brothers, and even Stephanie and Reverend Putty are on the fast track to Heaven."

Orel grins despite himself. "Hot dog!"

"God spared me for a reason," Clay says, buying into his own logic as he hears it aloud. "He—he thinks I'm worth it. That I can be a good person if I just  _try_." He remembers more of God's wisdom and says, "So what do I need to do? Tell me how to be better."

Orel makes a face like he thinks this is a trick question, that Clay will strike or belittle him if he answers honestly.

"You can tell me."

After a moment of hesitation, Orel says, "You should stop drinking. You're a bad person when you drink."

Yes, Orel has told him this before, but Clay wasn't ready to listen then.

* * *

In the late night hours at the hospital, there isn't much for Clay to do (the television in his room has gone off-air), so he tries to sleep. His dreams are a jumble of the divine and the demonic. Memories of Hell reach through the black void of sleep and twist his dreams to nightmares. When Clay wakes, he's panicked and sweating, the heart monitor beside the bed beeping out a manic rhythm.

* * *

Orel doesn't know what to make of Clay's new disposition. He's grateful that Clay appears to be making strides towards change, but Orel remains cautiously optimistic about the whole thing. Even Bloberta seems suspicious in the way she looks at him and edges free of his eager embraces. And Clay looks like an actor who hasn't learned his lines but has been called upon to perform regardless.

Orel believes his father is capable of change, but he doubts real, genuine change comes so quickly. And he  _knows_  Clay, knows him well enough to expect things will soon return to the status quo. Regardless of Clay's sobriety now, he will start drinking again. Or he'll perform enough good acts that he feels clears the slate, and then it's back to the Old Clay. So there's no reason for Orel to bond with Clay (or even start liking him a little) if Clay's just going to shed this personal growth like a snakeskin.

After dinner, Clay asks, "Orel, you wanna go outside and play catch?"

"With you?"

"That's the idea!"

It's like Clay's been replaced by a Pod Person. This isn't even his first good deed tonight; earlier Clay praised Bloberta's cooking to an almost uncomfortable degree, then he offered to clean up the kitchen (to which Bloberta refused). He also chose not to drink since he left the hospital, and now he's offering to play catch? Orel has every God-given right to be suspicious, but he's curious how long it will take before Clay abandons this new self.

"Alright!" Orel agrees, and they go out to the front yard. Orel picks up his baseball from the grass and gives it a limp toss, not really expecting Clay to catch it. But Clay does. The ball lands in his mitt with a soft  _thwack_  sound, and he actually  _throws the ball back_. Orel fumbles a bit with the catch.  _This is so weird_ , he thinks.

"Say, Orel, what's going on in your life?" Clay catches the ball, throws it back. "I feel like I don't even know my own son."

"Because you don't." Orel makes the catch and holds onto the ball for a moment. "You never really paid attention to me except when I did stuff wrong."

Clay opens his mouth, closes it. He wears the expression of a lost child in crowded shopping mall. "I know, and I'll never be sorry enough. But God gave me a second chance, so maybe you can give me one too."

Now that's more like the Clay that Orel remembers. "Maybe," Orel says. He throws the ball with a bit more force, and it lands in the glove with a leathery smack. Orel knows all about Jesus's credo of forgiveness, but there ought to be a threshold for second chances. Shooting your own son in the leg seems like the point of no return with regards to forgiveness.

Because Orel remembers that day in the woods. The gunshot that tore through his leg. The terrible blue-white nova of pain that screamed for hours and never seemed to go silent. Lying in the dirt and leaves with a bullet hole in his leg. The baleful way Clay wasted that bottle of disinfectant, Orel's only hope of relief.

And now he's supposed to  _let that go_?

* * *

Later, Orel rides his bike to Reverend Putty's house. If Orel had time to think it over, he might have blown the whole thing off and told himself he's being stupid. But instead he knocks on the front door without hesitation.

When the door swings open, Reverend Putty greets him with a half-smile. "Orel! To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"I have a real problem, Reverend Putty."

"If you're looking for religious or spiritual guidance, I'm off the clock."

"I don't think I am," Orel says, unsure why he came. "I guess I just want to talk."

Putty looks at him with bewilderment and fascination, but ultimately lets him inside.

Orel sits beside Putty on the tattered couch and comes right out with it. He tells Putty about the accident, about Clay's newfound desire to change. "How am I supposed to forgive him after all the bad things he did?"

Putty gives Orel his full attention, but his silence feels terribly heavy. When he finally speaks, it comes as such a relief that Orel actually exhales. "Ah, now there's a sticky subject: forgiveness," Putty says. "Christ teaches us to turn the other cheek and love our enemies, but He was the Son of God! What about us regular folks? If you ask me, Jesus set the bar a little too high with all that crucifixion stuff. When Peter asked Jesus how many times he's supposed to forgive people, Jesus said seventy times seven! Well, I did the math, and that works out to 490 times. Now maybe that doesn't sound like much, but when you forgive everyone who sins against you 490 times… That can get to be a pretty big number."

 _Save it for Sunday,_  Orel thinks but does not say.

Putty seems to sense that Orel wants him to stop sermonizing. "Look, the whole point of forgiveness is to surrender your pain to God. He can take a lickin' and keep on tickin'! You're not letting your dad off the hook for what he did, or even saying that what he did or said is okay. Forgiveness means not letting that pain control your life or turn you into the same kind of person who hurt you."

Orel thinks forgiving Clay's transgressions will use all his allotted forgiveness tokens and then some. But keeping count probably negates the whole idea of surrendering your pain to God. Anyone looking to hold grudges  _carte blanche_  might not be the best example of godliness.

"Do you really think he can change?" Orel asks.

"I think he can. I don't know if he  _will_. Don't expect anything permanent, but you can enjoy the little moments."

Orel supposes that's fair enough. "He said he met God."

A wave of shock seems to travel over Putty's face. His eyes are wide behind his glasses. "Did he, now?"

"He said God spared him for a reason, 'cause God thinks he can be better. And God told him you and Stephanie are getting into Heaven."

Putty gives a subtle fist-pump and whispers,  _"Yes_." He looks at Orel. "Uh, what else did he tell you?"

"That's about it. You'd have to ask my dad for the rest."

"Maybe I will. Send him over sometime. I'd love to pick his brain. If someone in Moralton actually met God, I want to hear about it!"

* * *

Clay shows up the following day as Reverend Putty's working on Sunday's upcoming sermon. "Clay, what a surprise!" Putty greets him at the door, though Clay's presence here is no surprise at all. What surprises him is this might be the first time Putty's seen Clay without a drink in his hand. At least outside of church, that is. "This isn't about Orel, is it?"

"No, no, this time it's about me."

Putty lets Clay inside and clears away the books and papers from the couch. "Excuse the mess. I've been trying to figure out what to write for Sunday's sermon. You know there's always so much pressure on the first sermon of the new year. New year, new beginnings, all that uplifting motivational crap. Just between you and me, I've been phoning it in the last ten years or so. I give the same sermon every first Sunday of the new year, and no one even notices!" Putty sighs and shakes his head. "But you're not here to listen to me complain. Sit down, make yourself at home. You want a drink?"

Putty notices how Clay reacts to the offer. That sharp twitch to attention. The movement of his Adam's apple as he swallows. The wild look in his eyes. All these things pass within one second before Clay answers, "N—no thanks." He settles onto the couch.

"Suit yourself, but I'm parched." Putty goes into the kitchen, disappearing from Clay's line of sight. He intends to pull a trick on Clay, although not a particularly mean-spirited one. But if Clay has put away the alcohol (and the look of pure need in his eyes says he has), then Putty wonders how Clay might react to a drink in arm's reach.

"What seems to be the problem?" Putty asks from the kitchen. He takes out a glass tumbler from the cabinet and drops in some ice cubes.

"I'm not sure it  _is_  a problem," Clay begins, and his voice takes on an odd quality when the ice clinks in the glass. "But I died and met God, and Orel doesn't even seem interested!"

"Whoa, whoa, slow down! You say you met God?" Putty heard an abridged version of this story from Orel, but he wants to get the scoop straight from the source. Clay can't see him from here, so Putty opens the refrigerator and takes out a bottle of ginger ale. He fills up the glass, grateful that the ale's lost most of its fizz; the sound of sparkling bubbles won't draw Clay's attention.

"I, uh, I'm pretty sure it was Him," Clay says. As Putty returns to the couch, full glass in hand, Clay tells him about the accident and his near-death experience. "He was… ethereal. That's the only way I know how to put it. He was this blinding figure of light. We were in this void, like we were floating out in space. It wasn't purgatory—at least, He didn't  _say_  it was." As Clay speaks, he wears a look of utter helplessness and longing. His gaze flicks to Putty's face, but his eyes are fixed on the glass in Putty's hand. Putty takes a drink to goad him. The clink of the ice cubes makes Clay's hands—drawn into fists in his lap—tighten almost imperceptibly.

"He had this big book, like a phone book," Clay continues, "and I guess it had information about everyone who dies, because He read off a list of my sins."

"Sheesh, how long were you dead?"

Clay tries a scowl, but there's no heat to it. "Long enough." His arm begins to move—as though lifting a glass to his mouth—then he stops himself. "He showed me Hell. It's worse than we think! A million times worse!"

Putty sets his glass on the coffee table and picks up his notepad. He should have been taking notes from the start. "Oh yeah?"

"He didn't want to show me, but I forced His hand."

"You can be pretty persuasive," Putty agrees.

"But He showed me mercy and sent me back for a reason."

"It better not be to spread His word. I run the God business around here, Clay. I've got nothing else."

"No, of course not! I'm no modern-day prophet," Clay laughs. "He told me to be a better person and to be kind. Can you believe it? All we have to do is love thy neighbor, and we've got a first-class ticket to Heaven."

"How's that going for you?" Putty asks, scribbling down notes the best he can while Clay talks.

Clay pauses, a contemplative look coming over his face. His brow creases, and he sneaks a glance at Putty's glass on the table. "No one believes that I could actually  _be_  better. I'm trying as hard as I can, and I think I'm doing okay, but… it's like it doesn't matter to Orel or Bloberta. To them I'm always going to be an abusive, self-destructive alcoholic who had no love for anyone."

Putty blinks, because shit just got real there.

"God's words, not mine," Clay clarifies.

"God said that?" Putty taps the end of his pencil against his chin in thought. "Eh, sounds like Him. He's kind of a jerk sometimes."

Clay's staring at the glass now, the way a cheetah might eye a wounded gazelle. He continues as though he hasn't heard Putty. "And what if that's true? What if I get completely sober and I'm still me?"

The cynical side of Putty thinks that's a very real possibility, but he doesn't want to shoot Clay down, not when he seems like he wants to be better. "You didn't happen to ask God about that, did you?"

"He said it's all about being kind. Making people's lives better by being around. He said life isn't all about being miserable, and that I could just divorce Bloberta if I want and be with someone else—guilt-free! But I don't want to quit without giving it the good ol' college try." Beads of sweat have appeared on Clay's brow. "I asked Orel what I should do, and he told me to stop drinking, which I'm doing—I'm four days sober—but even Bloberta won't take me seriously. Like all this is a joke to her! And I just— Oh, screw it!" Clay grabs the glass off the table and downs its contents in one long gulp.

Putty smiles to himself when Clay realizes he did not, in fact, break his sobriety. Clay's mouth scrunches up in a confused scowl, then his face relaxes with relief. "Oh, thank God!" Clay half-sobs. He's staring into the empty glass and laughing like a madman. "It's only ginger ale!" He looks at Putty in reverence. "Did you  _know_?"

Putty smirks. "You think I haven't been around recovering drunks before?" The switcheroo may have been a trick, but it's showed him Clay's priorities. If Clay valued a drink over his sobriety, he would have been enraged it wasn't booze in the glass. "And I wanted to see if all your talk of self-improvement was just blowing smoke. Orel said you're vying for sainthood, but I had to see for myself."

"Even you didn't believe me," Clay says, like he's proving a point.

"Now I do. And why wouldn't I believe that you met God?" Out of all the people in Moralton, God chooses Clay? It's too ridiculous to be a lie. "Y'know, your experience would make a great topic for Sunday's sermon. Maybe you could fill me in on the details, and I'll jerk this lame old sermon until it's hard."

* * *

Putty takes the pulpit on Sunday morning with a spring in his step: "Folks, it doesn't get much better than this. We've been blessed with another new year, another chance to lose those pesky ten pounds or kick that bad habit. But we've also been blessed with something greater: an actual witness to the glory of God! That's right, friends and neighbors, our very own Clay Puppington has peered behind the curtain and spoken with the big guy Himself!"

The congregation turns in one large mass to look at Clay. He's sitting with his family in the third pew, where the Puppingtons always sit. Clay offers up an awkward smile, but Orel notices his hands clutch at his Bible, the skin over his knuckles stretched white. Bloberta frowns at the attention directed at them.

"Show's not over, folks," Putty says. "Eyes up here." They all look at him again. "Anyway, Clay was kind enough"—Putty smiles at some punchline known only to him—"to tell me about his near-death experience and allow me to share it with you. I couldn't be happier to spread this good news. We sure got the Mormons beat on that front, I'll tell you that much. Because when it comes right down to it, when we stand before the Almighty after all is said and done, what virtues does God value? What, you ask, matters the most when our sins are weighed and our good deeds counted? One thing: kindness.

"According to the man upstairs, we've got it all wrong." Putty reads off of his notes. "We put too much focus on the outdated and, frankly, buzzkill parts of the Bible, and in doing so we missed the bigger picture. We twist the Scripture to support our own prejudices or self-flagellation. We deny ourselves basic human needs out of some backwards hope that our sacrifices will be rewarded. Like God will be pleased as punch that we didn't fully enjoy the world He created or the one life He gave to us. If God didn't want us to be happy, He wouldn't have let us feel joy in the first place."

Orel feels a wild exultation from within. Something about this sermon feels different, like Reverend Putty has some kind of private line to God and is finally telling it like it is.

Putty continues, looking out at his audience: "God tells us to love thy neighbor as thyself. To love not in word or with the tongue, but in deed and truth. But do we do that? No! Sure, we talk a good game, but we're quick to judge and even quicker to cast that first stone. 'Judge not lest he himself be judged.' For most of us, it's a great yearbook quote, but we don't live our lives by it. Which is a real shame, because being judgmental and being kind are in opposition. God's the Almighty Judge anyway, and He's got plenty of time to do it. He didn't put us here to tear each other apart."

Orel looks around to see how the rest of Moralton is receiving this slam-dunk of a sermon. The congregation is weirdly silent. Toward the back, Miss Censordoll sits with her eyes blazing. Her thin lips are pressed together so tightly her mouth has disappeared.

"Now, I know I'm the last person to stand up here and criticize," Putty says. "I'm as guilty as the rest of you. But if God could give Clay a second chance—just like He gave to Jonah—why can't we extend the same mercy to ourselves and our neighbors?" Orel notices the twitch of a scowl on Clay's mouth. "When we're swallowed up in the belly of a whale, we need compassion, not punishment for getting swallowed in the first place. So in this new year, let's follow Jesus's example and start loving each other. You have to do it every day, but every day it gets easier, until it's just something you do." Putty shuffles through his notes, looking for something. "Huh. That's the end? I thought I wrote more," he mumbles. "Oh well. Amen."

* * *

After the service, Orel gabs with Putty ("Wow, that was your best sermon ever!"), and Clay wants to whisk his son away before Orel gets some ridiculous idea in his head. But Putty's name-dropping has made Clay somewhat of a celebrity. A small crowd of townsfolk have blocked Clay's path to the church doors. The questions come rapid-fire:

"What did God look like?"

"Did you see Heaven through the pearly gates?"

"Are you sure it was God and not Jesus?"

He can't get through them without throwing elbows, which seems contrary to Putty's talk of kindness and Clay's own betterment initiative. So he fields their questions with as much patience as he can muster: "He was, uh, a big glowing shape." "No, there wasn't much of anything to look at." "Pretty sure it was God. He sure acted like Him."

Clay takes a step foward, and the crowd parts like the Red Sea. He hurries for the entrance, but Fran Censordoll catches him before he can escape. "Clay, what's your hurry? We have so much to discuss," she coos as she pulls him away from the open doors where Orel, Bloberta, and the twins (that's how he refers to Shapey and Block in his head now, it's much simpler) wait along with Reverend Putty.

"Can I get a rain-check on this? I need to have a talk with the reverend."

"No, Clay, you can't." Her tone cuts through him, and Clay understands he can't brush her off like the rest. " _We_  need to talk about how you're poisoning this town with lies. As the mayor of Moralton, it's your duty to set an example for our more  _susceptible_  minds."

 _What the fuck are you talking about_ , Clay wants to ask. There's way too much to unpack here. The dumbfounded look on his face makes her elaborate.

"You've got some nerve putting words in God's mouth. All this nonsense about acceptance and lack of judgment. It's blasphemy is what it is! All God wants us to do is be nice? Have you read the Bible, Clayton? God is all fire and brimstone, and if you think He didn't put us here to be critical, maybe it's time for you to step down. Let someone better suited for the job take over."

"Look, all I did was tell Reverend Putty about what I saw. He's the one who spun it into a sermon. Why don't you take this up with him?" But Clay knows the answer to that. Censordoll can't manipulate Putty as easily as she can with Clay.

"You need to be careful," Censordoll says, ignoring Clay's question. "If God sent you back to be a better leader, well, what do you think will happen when you mess up?"

" _When_?" This choice of words chafes Clay, but some of the sting is lost here. He knew from the start that Fran Censordoll would be the last person to grant him any benefit of the doubt.

"It's going to happen, and God only gives out second chances once."

It may have been a mistake to let Putty broadcast Clay's new lease on life. Now the townsfolk will be watching for any little slip on his part. Not all of them are as authoritarian as Censordoll, but there are enough extremists to make Clay miserable.

"I'll take that under advisement," Clay says in a tone that sounds more like  _Go fuck yourself._

"See that you do," Censordoll says before making her exit.

Outside, Orel's still talking Putty's ear off. Clay sidles between them to interrupt. "Orel," Clay says, ruffling his son's hair. "I hope you're not giving the good reverend a hard time."

"Of course not! I'm not bothering you, am I, Reverend Putty?" Orel looks at Putty in a way he used to look at Clay. Something alien squeezes Clay's heart.

"Not like I have anything better to do," Putty says almost regretfully.

Clay takes Putty's arm, and, uh-oh, there's a sensation he enjoys a little too much. "Can I have a word with you? We'll just be a minute." Before Putty can answer, Clay drags him inside the church. All the parishioners have filed out by now, so Clay isn't too worried about being overheard. "Did you mean it when you compared me to Jonah up there?" Clay tosses a hand toward the pulpit. "Because, y'know, things didn't go so great for him."

Putty chuckles. "Clay, come on. Relax. It's a metaphor. Or a simile. Whatever, I'm no Hemingway."

"So you're sure it wasn't a snide joke at my expense? A little wink-wink nudge-nudge to everyone that I'm going to waste my second chance like Jonah did with his?"

"What? No! I wrote the last couple parts of that sermon over breakfast this morning. It's not that deep."

"It's not that deep?" Clay laughs. "So you're the one person in town who thinks I can sober up and fly straight and be Father of the Year, huh?"

Putty sidesteps that conversational brick by saying, "Why does it matter so much what I think?"

"Because it would be nice to have someone—anyone—on my side."

"I'm not  _not_  on your side," Putty says. "But change doesn't happen overnight. Maybe give Orel and Bloberta a little more time to come around? It's barely been a week. And I'm sorry to tell you this"—Putty starts, not sounding sorry in the slightest—"but you're not going to be the first person Moralton practices kindness on. You made a lot of enemies last year, and everyone knows what really happened to Orel."

"You think I don't feel bad about that? You think I don't feel guilty over seeing him limp every day?"

"Of course I do, but you're not the victim here!"

Orel pops into the emptied church as if on cue. "Uh, Dad? Mom's ready to go home. She said she'll leave without you if you don't hurry."

"Hold your horses, kiddo," Clay says with a broad smile.

"Your dad was just telling me how great my sermon was," Putty says.

"Like father, like son," Clay adds before his brain can tell him to stop. Orel's pleasant expression tightens, and Clay notices the way Putty frowns, too.

"Go on, Orel. We'll just be a few minutes," Putty says, and Orel ducks out of the open doorway. Putty focuses on Clay again. "Have you ever said you're sorry?"

Clay gives this some thought. He remembers apologizing to Orel about the shooting, but it was a rushed stream of words and, if he's honest with himself, not genuine. And then he took it all back after Orel refused to give him what he wanted. "…No?"

Putty flails his arms like he's trying to fly. "Then that's why no one's taking you seriously! You haven't showed them you've learned anything. If you can't apologize for the things you've done wrong, all this is just a performance to make you look good. But being good isn't about you, Clay. It's about  _them_." He moves down the aisle, putting distance between himself and Clay. "Go be with your family. Some of us don't have that luxury."

Clay nods, but Putty's no longer looking at him.

* * *

Clay drives Bloberta and the kids home. The car has seen no repairs since the wreck, but at least it still runs (for the time being). It makes a clicking sound every now and again that Clay figures he'll have to investigate at some point. And the radio's busted, which means they drive in a terse silence.

Clay remembers how these post-church drives home used to be, with Orel chattering about the morning's sermon and how great Reverend Putty is. Bloberta humming along with the radio. Shapey (and eventually Block) babbling and screaming. The silence feels full with the weight of everyone's thoughts, a jumble of conflicting emotions. And Clay realizes it's all his own doing. In one year he managed to whittle down his family into these numb husks of who they used to be. Even Shapey and Block have mellowed from their usual excitability. As much as Clay would like to blame it all on that fateful hunting trip, he knows better. The cracks in his marriage existed long before that day in the woods, and his reckless drinking had over a decade to chip away at Orel's faith in him.

Isn't that what God told him?  _You were an abusive, self-destructive alcoholic who had no love for anyone, not even your own flesh and blood. There is not one single person who is better off for having known you._

Jesus, how profoundly fucked up does a guy have to be to live forty years without making a positive difference to one fucking person?

He parks in front of the house and lingers lost in thought in the driver's seat while the others get out. Orel's standing in the open doorway of the passenger side, and Clay feels his stare.

"Dad, are you coming?"

"I'll catch up with you."

Orel hesitates before hurrying into the house after his mother and brothers. Clay hears the solid thump as the front door shuts.

_You're not the victim here! Being good isn't about you, Clay. It's about them._

Yes, Clay supposes he's been somewhat self-centered. But growing up as "Mommy's miracle" might have warped his perception of the world. His mother showered him with affection and praise, and Clay never had to share any of it. Then

( _he killed her_ )

she died, and Clay sought that same attention from his father, but Arthur Puppington weighed worthiness in violence. Clay continued to poke and prod his father throughout the years in hopes of gaining said worthiness. Now there's a scout badge he never earned.

_Go be with your family. Some of us don't have that luxury._

Clay wonders if Reverend Putty would still consider it a luxury if he knew Bloberta manipulated Clay into marriage. Or if he knew she cheated on Clay and bore him an illegitimate child.

Some luxury.

But it's the hand he's been dealt, and Clay thinks he ought to make the best of it. He turns off the car and heads inside the house.

This morning's dishes clatter in the sink as Bloberta scrubs plates and silverware. Shapey chases Block up the staircase and into their shared bedroom. Orel isn't here; he must have gone upstairs too. The children seem to sense a tension brewing in the air, the way animals can sense an approaching storm, since they've all vacated the living room. Bloberta doesn't greet Clay when the door opens, instead maintaining her stern silence. She's on a roll with the silent treatment, having been mute since they left the church.

Clay decides to try words as he joins her in the kitchen. "That was, uh, some sermon today, huh?" When he hears himself speak out loud, it all sounds stupid and contrived. He picks up a dirty coffee mug, trying to help, but Bloberta snatches it back and dunks it in the soapy water-filled sink. Her hands work frantically under the water, as though she's imagining taking that scrub pad to Clay's face instead of the ceramic mug.

She says nothing, so Clay tries again. "Sure makes you think, doesn't it? About, y'know, God, and why we're here, and what it all means."

Bloberta speaks, still scrubbing that mug so she doesn't have to make eye contact with him. "Yes, Clay, it does make me think. It makes me think how convenient it is that you get to tell this story about getting a second chance after all the shitty things you've done. You get the whole town wrapped up in your talk with God, so they  _forget_  you were driving drunk in the first place."

"I didn't ask Putty to bring my experience into his sermon—"

"But you told him about it."

"Because you didn't care! I told you I died and met God, but you just nodded and said, 'that's nice, dear.' And Orel shrugged it off when I told him, so what was I supposed to do?"

Bloberta huffs a nasty little sound of contempt. "You might have Orel fooled, but not me. You're not going to be better. You'll put on a show, say all your lines, hit all your cues. Maybe Orel is naive enough to think you can change, but I know who you are. And you can't erase the ugliness inside you."

Arguing with Bloberta is like bare-knuckle boxing, and Clay is dazed from the accusation. "What? You think I'm faking… being nice?"

_All this is just a performance to make you look good._

"I  _know_  you're faking. People don't change."

"That's what you have to believe, isn't it? Because if you're wrong, you'd have to admit that you changed me."

Bloberta rolls her eyes like they've had this argument before. "It's not the drinking, Clay. It's you."

Clay recalls Bloberta raising this point before, albeit to Orel, unaware that Clay was listening. But does she believe that, or is it a deeply-ingrained lie?

( _What if I get completely sober and I'm still me?_ )

"Oh, so I'm just fundamentally wrong, then, as always?" Clay says, pacing around the kitchen in hopes this argument will end. His palms are sweating, his heart banging against his ribs.

"That's not what I said—"

"So what do you want me to do, huh? How do I make all this right?"

Bloberta turns, looking at him with tired pity. "You can't."

"Then what are we doing here?" It's the first time Clay has acknowledged the subject of their failing marriage to her. And the worst part is, Bloberta doesn't even look surprised. Maybe it's the way Clay says it, something in his tone that carries weight. Or maybe it's the emotion shaking in his throat. "If nothing I say or do will make any difference, what's the point of"—Clay gestures to the kitchen around them, to the home they made together—"this?"

Her face crinkles, her lower lip trembling, as though some inner dam is breaking.

"Why don't you just go?" Clay suggests, and the tenderness he hears in his own voice is startling. "Take the kids, or leave them with me if you'd rather be on your own. But there's no reason we should be stuck here feeling miserable."

She raises a yellow-gloved hand to her mouth to stifle a gasp—or a sob. Quickly, she turns away so he can't see her face. "You've given me a lot to think about," Bloberta says and resumes her dishwashing.

Clay waits there in the kitchen, anticipating that she might say more, but she doesn't. Eventually he makes it upstairs and knocks on Orel's door.

"Hey, Orel, you in there?"

"Yeah."

"Can I come in?"

"I guess."

Clay opens the door. Orel's sitting cross-legged on his bed, reading one of his many Bibles. Clay looks around as though taking in the sights here for the first time. Orel's room is filled with memorabilia of the things he loves: spirituality, literature, dinosaurs, sports. Typical kid's stuff. Clay recalls his own childhood bedroom and feels a pang.

"Something wrong?" Orel asks, looking up from the Bible in his lap. "I heard you and Mom arguing."

Clay sighs. "How much did you hear?"

"Enough."

"I'm sorry," Clay says, trying out this apology thing Putty's trying to sell him. "You're just a kid. You shouldn't have to worry about this stuff."

Orel's reaction surprises Clay. He expects an eyeroll or a placid stare, but Orel gives him a look of stunned disbelief. That's more than Clay's gotten from Orel in a long time, so he keeps going.

"You see, Orel, I haven't been a very good father or a very good husband," he says, sitting on the corner of the bed. Orel doesn't scoot away. "Anything I say to explain it will sound like an excuse, but I want you to understand. My mother died when I was about your age, and my father blamed me for what happened to her."

"Golly," Orel gasps. "Why'd Grandpa do that?"

"Because I killed her," Clay admits numbly, as if in a confession booth. He has never told this story to another living soul.

Orel's mouth forms a perfect little 'o.'

"Not on purpose! No, of course not!" Clay says, but he wonders. "I was just playing a prank on her, a harmless little joke, but she had a weak heart, and…" He shakes his head, shaking away the memories that have come flooding back. "If—if it hadn't been me, it would have been something else, right? A surprise birthday party. A car backfire. The smoke alarm blaring in the middle of the night…" These are the lies he tells himself.

The silence spins out, and, mercifully, Orel says nothing.

Clay continues: "But it was me, so my father blamed me. It makes sense, and maybe it felt good to point the finger at me since I was always closer to my mother. But after she died, my father and I were stuck with each other. He couldn't look at me without seeing the worthless kid who killed the woman he loved. Sometimes when I look in the mirror, that's who I see too. Because I was mad at her when I played that prank." He pauses. "No, it wasn't a prank. It was a cruel joke. See, my whole life she told me I was special, that I was her miracle, her only child. But I found out that was a lie. She had ten other kids before me, but they all died before they were born.

"So I played a cruel joke on her. My father gave me Ol' Gunny earlier that evening—you remember Ol' Gunny, don't you?"

Orel nods and says that he does.

"Well, I took out Ol' Gunny and shot a ketchup bottle. I wanted her to think I was dead and realize that I was special. You know what I thought when I pulled the trigger? The last thought I had about my mother when she was alive? 'She'll be sorry.'" Clay scoffs an empty laugh. "I don't even know what I wanted her to be sorry for." He falls silent again, and Orel waits. "Anyway, when she heard the bang and saw the red goop all over my chest… I was just playing dead, but I guess she saw the real thing. By the time I knew she was having a heart attack, it was too late."

"Wow," Orel says after a moment. He looks disgusted and dismayed, as though Clay has pulled away a bandage and revealed an open sore. "That's awful. Did Grandpa ever forgive you?"

"I never asked, and he never brought it up. People don't always say what they mean."

"Yeah, I know. Would you blame me if something like that happened to Mom?"

_Are you kidding? I'd buy you a pony._

Clay's counting it as progress that he keeps these thoughts in his own head instead of saying them.

"No, I know what that's like," Clay says, shaking his head. "And I know none of this means much to you. When I died, God made it crystal clear that I'm not a good man. And your mother showed me sometimes you can make things so wrong you can never go back."

"If it makes you feel better, I forgive you," Orel says.

Clay feels torn up, eviscerated by mercy from the one person who has every right to withhold it. "I wouldn't if I were you."

"W—well, it's like Reverend Putty said: we need to be compassionate the way Jesus was. Jesus said we're supposed to forgive people almost five hundred times when they hurt us."

"So start counting."

"But the whole point of forgiveness is to give your hurt to God, so I don't need to keep count."

Clay frowns. "You'll hit that five hundred limit in about, oh, a year and a half if you forgive me once a day. Sooner than that if you're not wiping the slate clean."

An odd look comes over Orel's face, and Clay can't read it. It makes him nervous, as if Orel understands some great, previously unknown truth. "I know you don't want me to forgive you. But I've been praying for you, and God answered my prayers! I prayed for a sign that you weren't just pretending to be nice, 'cause I thought you were acting and not changing on the inside. But you wouldn't feel bad about me forgiving you if you weren't really trying."

How can Orel see inside of him so clearly? No, Orel sees straight through him, past the veneer of arrogance and right to the black gristle of self-loathing that lurks beneath. All at once Clay is terrified and awed by Orel's intuition.

"You're a smart kid," Clay says. He reaches out, intending to tousle Orel's hair. Orel flinches for a half-second before Clay's hand comes to rest on the top of his head.  _Like a dog who's been kicked one too many times,_  Clay thinks with uneasy surprise. "Say, Orel… How would you like to help me with a little project?"

"What is it?"

"I was thinking about turning the parlor into a playroom for you and your brothers. Maybe add a pool table or a foosball table. And, hey, you could have some of your friends over when it's finished. Does that sound like fun to you?"

Orel's face lights up with a genuine joy Clay hasn't seen from him in ages. "Boy, does it!"

Above all, Clay needs to get rid of all things down there that remind him of alcohol: the crystal glasses, the decanters of whiskey, the neon sign from Forghetty's. It's a room designed to encourage drinking. If booze is no longer a part of Clay's life (even when the craving feels like a swarm of bees buzzing inside him), he ought to vanquish it for good like an ancient evil.

Clay looks at his son and sees his own potential goodness staring back at him.

* * *

Over the next few days, Orel helps his father remodel the parlor. It's a little weird at first (the last time they did something together Orel ended up with a bullet in his leg), but the tension eases enough for Orel to stop worrying. Clay lets Orel paint over the walls with any color he chooses ("Blue, because it's the color of the sky and Jesus's eyes!"). He tries to get Orel talking by asking him about his favorite things, if he likes any of the girls in his class, and how he's doing in school. It's like Clay has never before spoken with an actual human child, but Orel cuts him some slack. Clay is  _trying_ , and God seems to have answered Orel's prayers, prayers that went unanswered since the post-mortem of their father-son hunting trip.

Did the car accident have anything to do with Orel's prayers? No, it simply couldn't. Such a thing must come from the devil himself, because Orel could never wish harm upon another person. He knows that could get him banned from Heaven forever, even if Clay wasn't exactly a father worth honoring.

But the Lord works in ways Orel still doesn't completely understand. Maybe a near-death experience was the only way to get through to Clay Puppington.

Sometimes Orel wonders how things might have shaken out if Clay  _didn't_  survive the accident. Would Mom be happy? Even Orel can see his parents despise each other. Would Orel himself be happier if Clay were gone? Part of him says, yes, of course.  _Good riddance to bad rubbish_ , as his mother says. But a childlike part of him says no, because it would mean never having the chance to build a good relationship with his father. A chance he never thought he'd have but hoped for nonetheless.

As he paints, Orel stands on his tip-toes to push the paint roller up to the crease where the wall and ceiling meet. During one of these pop-ups, Orel loses his balance. He swings out his free arm for equilibrium, and his hand strikes one of Clay's scotch bottles. The bottle flies off the bar and hits the floor with a shattering pop. Amber liquid and shards of glass cover the hardwood.

Orel gulps, immediately transported back to the moment when he sent a bullet through Clay's bottle of drink. The anger that poured out of his father then… He's certain he'll get the belt when Clay comes back from the restroom.

"Orel?" Mom appears in the doorway of the parlor, roused from her knitting by the crash. She sees what he's done and lifts a questioning eyebrow.

"I—I didn't mean to! It was an accident!" Orel pleads.

Mom chuckles and stands with her hands on her hips. "Oh, don't be silly. You don't have to convince  _me;_  it's your father who needs the convincing. You know how he is about his precious drink. But do try to be more careful next time."

Orel says that he will and drops to the ground, trying to gather the broken glass off the floor. Maybe he can throw away the bottle shards and pretend the stain on the wood is water or juice.

He hears footfalls approaching, not his mother's dainty steps but his father's self-assured gait. Orel looks up and sees Clay standing on the step of the parlor in time-freeze clarity: his gaze finding the broken bottle and the booze-colored stain on the floor; seeing Orel crouched over said stain looking most assuredly guilty; the expression that might be at home on the face of a vampire who smells the copper scent of blood.

And Orel smells it now too, not blood but the stink of scotch rising from the puddle soaking into the floor.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to," Orel pleads again, though he knows it will do no good. This is the moment where Clay will break his cruelty abstinence, Orel is sure of it.

"Don't worry about it, half-pint," Clay says with no reproach in his voice. "I was gonna throw that thing out anyway. And now your mother has something to clean."

Orel studies Clay's face. There must be the twitch of a lie somewhere, a microcosm of his hidden anger. But the vein in his temple isn't bulging the way it would have before the car accident. His mouth isn't etched into a hard scowl (or even a soft scowl, for that matter). His brow is creased in concern, not displeasure.

"Let's get this glass out of the way." Clay crouches and picks up the shattered remains of the bottle. Orel watches, awed, as Clay dumps the glass into the trash with a loud clink. "And it's like it never happened!"

Orel isn't sure about that.

"You want to break for lunch?" Clay asks, like it's normal for him not to throw a fit over spilled booze.

"Sure…" Orel finds another bottle behind the bar. It's a little more than half empty, but it will serve his purpose just fine. "Were you gonna throw all these away?"

Clay pokes his head in from the living room. "That's the idea. New year, new me."

Orel hears his mother laugh a soft, scornful sound.

"So you won't be mad if I do  _this_?" Orel squeezes his eyes shut and brings the bottle down against the edge of the bar, as if wielding a hammer. The glass smashes, tiny flecks bouncing off his cheeks. Orel feels the wet splash of amber liquid on the front of his shirt.

"Orel!" Clay sounds surprised and concerned, but not angry. He hurries to Orel and takes the jagged bottle neck out of his hands. "Be careful with that. You could cut yourself. Pour them down the sink next time."

 _Next time?_  Orel considers this possibility and grabs another bottle from the shelf. He clutches it, feeling devious.

A strange look comes over Clay's face, making him appear almost woeful. "Oh man," Clay mumbles, perhaps to himself more than Orel. "We really are cut from the same cloth, huh?"

Orel doesn't know what Clay means by that, but it seems to sadden him greatly.

"Look, Orel," Clay starts, crouching again, and being at eye-level with his father inflicts Orel with a sense of unreality. "I think you did that on purpose to see how I'd react. But I'm not going to punish you that way anymore. God came down on that one with a hard no."

 _God had to tell you not to hit your son with a belt?_  Orel thinks but does not say.

"I know it's unusual, but I'm trying to fix where I went wrong. I want us to get to a point where you aren't afraid of me," Clay says with an honesty that's both comforting and discombobulating.

And as much as Orel wants that too, he will always  _remember_.

* * *

Stephanie's surprised to see Clay in the shop—doubly surprised since he's not here to complain about smut or drag Orel out to the car. No, today he's downright chipper.

"Hey, Dad," Orel says as Clay comes in whistling a jaunty tune. He stops swishing the broom across the floor. "Something wrong?"

"Wrong? Nothing's wrong," Clay says. "I thought I'd see if you want to go ice skating. The weather's perfect for it."

Indeed, it is. The morning's snowfall has ceased, leaving piles of fluffy white in its wake. Earlier Stephanie saw a group of kids playing hockey on the frozen pond.

"You don't mind if I steal him from you?" Clay asks Stephanie with good humor.

"He's been sweeping that floor all day," she chuckles. "He could use a break."

"I bet the floors get pretty dirty here." Clay looks down, as if searching for a spot Orel may have missed.

"You'd be surprised." Stephanie meets Orel's eager eyes. "Why don't you go have fun with your dad? You're only a kid once."

"You think so?"

She laughs a soft sound. "I know so, squirt. Besides, I wish I had known my dad when I was your age."

"You don't have a dad?" Orel asks, awed.

"I do, but he didn't live with us when I was born. It's a long story." Stephanie still hasn't told anyone in Moralton that she's the daughter of the reverend. Putty seems somewhat respected here, and the last thing she wants is to damage his reputation. Orel's a sweet kid, but Stephanie doubts he could keep a secret like that.

"Wow," Orel gapes; Stephanie loves how amazed he is by the simplest things.

"I hope you didn't spend Christmas alone," Clay tells her, and this kindness is strange (but not unwelcome) coming from him.

"I spent it with family, but thanks." She smiles, unable to help herself. "What about you? Did you and Orel have a nice Christmas?"

Clay smiles, joyless. "I wouldn't say that, but there's always next year." He claps Orel on the shoulder, and Orel flinches minutely. "Come on, Orel. We'll stop at the house and get your skates."

The bell above the door jingles as they leave.

At a quarter past six, Stephanie rings the doorbell of her father's home. Reverend Putty opens the door almost a second later, as if he's been standing there waiting for her. Since discovering her paternity, Stephanie established a rule that the two of them should have dinner together at least twice a week to get to know each other. But Stephanie saw how lonely Putty must be the first time she visited, so her recurring presence in his life means more than just casual conversation over dinner.

Tonight, the kitchen table has already been set with dishes and utensils. In the middle of the place settings is a pot of what looks like Hamburger Helper. Bless him, he's trying.

Over dinner, Putty tells her about Clay's meeting with God and personality makeover, about last week's sermon preaching the values of compassion. Stephanie listens, enthralled. She knew something seemed different about Clay today, but she couldn't define it. Now she understands; there is a warmth about him, perhaps only as strong as a candle flame, but a candle can light many others and lose nothing, as the saying goes.

"So that's why he was so pleasant," Stephanie says. "He came into the shop today."

"Clay Puppington actually set foot in Buried Pleasures? Can you tell me what he bought, or is that protected under some kind of client privilege?"

Stephanie laughs. "No, he didn't buy anything. He stopped in to take Orel ice skating."

"He's really taking this whole act seriously, huh?"

"You think it's an act?" Stephanie wonders. Putty would be a better judge of that than she would, but she's curious what his reasoning is.

Putty's eyebrows draw together when he frowns. "I don't know. I'm not a mind-reader, and I don't know how he acts when he's at home. And maybe what I think doesn't amount to a hill of beans. In the end, it's between him, God, and whoever he wronged. But it still feels… I don't know.  _Off_."

"What's the harm in encouraging him? Everybody needs support, especially when they're doing something difficult. If he's faking, so what? A few kind words never hurt anybody."

He pouts, like he doesn't appreciate the message of his sermon being used against him.

Stephanie continues, "Maybe drop in for a visit and see how he's doing? Or try to catch him after Sunday service."

"After last Sunday's sermon, I'm lucky if even Orel comes in after hours. I might have put myself out of business."

"How does a man of God put himself out of business in  _this_  town?"

"By being an idiot. Why'd I open my big mouth about being nice and forgiving people?" Putty grouses. "What reason is there to go to church if you cut out all the repentance and moral hand-wringing?"

"Faith?" Stephanie isn't religious, but she thinks there could be value in church-going after removing the worst of its principles. "Creating a positive environment? Giving people some sort of comfort?"

"Let's not be ridiculous. No one in Moralton comes to church for positivity or comfort."

"Orel does. And if you stop in at the Puppingtons', you can talk with Clay  _and_  Orel. Something about seeing people in their natural surroundings feels… more authentic."

Putty's frown smooths out a little at the suggestion, but Stephanie sees that she's reached him.

* * *

Putty stops by the Puppingtons' the following evening. Clay opens the door, his hands devoid of any drink. His remaining vice seems to be the tobacco pipe held between his teeth. "Reverend!" Clay greets him. "What's the occasion?"

"No occasion, just dropping by."

"You sure you don't need help with another sermon?" Clay chuckles good-naturedly and lets him inside. "Maybe a couple dollars in the collection plate?"

"I'm off the clock. Right now I'm strictly here as a friend and neighbor."

Bloberta emerges from the kitchen, a white apron cinched around the waist of her red dress. She's holding a wooden spoon in her hand. "Oh, hello, Reverend." There's a sourness in her voice, and Putty assumes he's interrupted their dinner preparations. "How nice of you to stop in. Are you here for Orel?"

"Actually, Clay's the man of the hour," Putty says.

"I see." Bloberta frowns and returns to the kitchen.

Clay sits on the couch, and Putty joins him there. "I hear you're still a human ray of sunshine around town," Putty says.

"That sounds like an exaggeration. But thanks, Rev'. I'm just doing God's work."

"At the rate you're going, I'm starting to worry about job security."

"Me?" Clay's eyes widen. "No, I couldn't! You've been part of this church as far back as I can remember! You officiated at my wedding!"

God, that makes Putty feel old. "Better you than Censordoll. You put her behind the pulpit and she'll send us all to Hell on a road paved with her 'good' intentions."

Clay's face scrunches up like he's been kicked in a delicate place. "She called your sermon 'blasphemy.'"

"Of course she did. If it had been her in place of you, she would've told God  _He_  was wrong!"

"'There's far too much smut in that Bible of yours! Starting out with Adam and Eve's filthy naked bodies? Think of all the children you're exposing to that lewd garbage!'" Clay says, doing his best Fran Censordoll impersonation.

Putty laughs, and Clay erupts into smug chuckles. "You've got the voice down but not the picket signs or rhyming slogans."

"Oh man, the rhyming! She's like a horrible Dr. Seuss character," Clay says before he starts laughing again. Then Putty's cracking up too, and he thinks his head will explode if he doesn't stop soon. It occurs to him that he doesn't have anyone in his life to gripe to. Stephanie will indulge his grievances against Moralton's own for a bit, but she's too much of a pacifist to speak ill of others. Clay, however, has enough beef with this town to feed an army.

Putty's head drops against the back of the couch as his laughter subsides. "Ah, jeez, I haven't laughed like that in ages. You're a riot."

Clay gives him a warm look, and for the first time Putty notices just how brilliant his eyes are. "Why don't you stay for dinner? It's spaghetti night."

"As tempting as that sounds, I really don't want to impose—"

"It's no trouble at all," Clay says with a dismissive wave of his hand. He peers around Putty and into the kitchen. "Is it, dear?"

"I suppose I could set another place at the table,  _dear_ ," Bloberta answers, and Putty hears the stone in her voice.

Clay slaps him on the back. "See? It's fine."

"Are you sure? Bloberta seems upset."

"That's just par for the course." Clay nudges him with an elbow. "Women, right?"

As much as Putty doesn't want to intrude on what might be a marital spat, he's curious about Bloberta's coldness. Is Clay still an unrepentant jerk at home, and his fake kindness here frustrates her?

Putty thinks it over and says, "Well, if you're sure it's not any trouble…"

They're all gathered around the table fifteen minutes later. Orel leads them in prayer (practically leaping into the seat beside Putty), and afterwards they dig in. The food isn't half bad, better than Putty's own cooking, though Stephanie's been helping him with that lately.

"Gosh, it was nice of you to come have dinner with us," Orel tells him with that unflinching admiration. "We never have people over like this! Not since—" He stops, as if recalling some unpleasant memory. "Well, it's been a while."

The twins (at least that's what Putty's calling them since he can't remember their names) babble and giggle to each other on the other side of the table.

"You should ask your parents to have guests more often," Putty suggests, to Orel's delight. "Sometimes people need to know they're wanted."

"So, Reverend," Bloberta says with interest, "how are things on your side of the fence? Any special lady in your life?"

Clay looks up from his plate in mid-bite, bewilderment written across his face.

Putty feels his own face heat up under the intensity of Bloberta's gaze. "N—no, but, y'know what? That's okay. I've made my peace with it."

"That sounds so terribly lonely."

"Whoa there!" Putty jumps when something touches him from underneath the table; it slides up his leg, traveling from his ankle to his knee. A quick peek tells him it's Bloberta's foot, encased in sheer pantyhose. His gaze snaps back to her face, certain her touch must have been accidental, but the smile on her ruby lips suggests otherwise.

Clay gives his wife a scornful glare. "What are you doing?" he hisses.

"Nothing," Bloberta sing-songs as her foot travels to Putty's crotch. He's hard immediately, his erection unbearable when Bloberta wiggles her toes against him.

Putty groans like he's dying. He doesn't mind if Clay wants to watch (or partake, even), but do the kids have to be here while this all goes down?

"What's wrong?" Orel asks, oblivious to the action going on underneath the table.

"Just a little cramp," Putty says through a wince.

"Keep it in your pants, sister," Clay growls at Bloberta. "We're trying to have a nice evening."

Bloberta draws her foot away, and finally Putty can breathe again. "And I suppose you're the expert now on all things nice, hm?"

"Hey, hey, come on," Putty says, trying to calm things down a bit. "Can we, uh, table this discussion until after dinner?" He chuckles at his own joke.

Orel laughs too. "I get it!"

Bloberta and Clay stop their bickering, and things return to some semblance of normalcy. Orel tells Putty how he and Clay renovated the parlor together, about their skating ice-capade ("I fell down a lot!" Orel announces), and about how God answered Orel's prayers for a nicer father.

"Well, I'm happy you're happy," Putty says once Orel's finished. He swirls spaghetti around the tines of his fork and takes a bite, trying to speed things up so he can leave. "A healthy family relationship is very important, both spiritually and personally." He looks at Clay. "You're doing great. I'm really impressed."

Clay smiles like a shy schoolboy who's received a compliment from his crush. He glances away, his cheeks red. "Aw shucks, Rev'. I'm blushing."

"Everything just  _has_  to be about you, doesn't it?" Bloberta sneers at him. "God forbid we go ten minutes without someone paying attention to Clay."

Clay opens his mouth like he's going to argue, but stops himself.

"Is it always like this?" Putty murmurs to Orel. Orel shrugs and shakes his head no.

From what Putty can gather, Bloberta might be hot for him. Or maybe she's flirting with Putty to irritate Clay in an act of marital vengeance for some unknown trespass. Unfortunately for Putty's sex life, the latter is more likely.

After dinner, Orel shows off the redesigned parlor, and they play a quick game of pool. Clay stands by, smoking his pipe and offering Orel tips on which shot to take ("Red solid, corner pocket"). Bloberta opts to wash dishes; since she and Clay aren't in the same room, the tension has waned, and Putty's not in such a hurry to leave.

"I couldn't help but notice your car's still smashed up," Putty says while Orel chalks up his own cue. "You, uh, need any help? I'm sure folks wouldn't mind if Sunday's collections go towards helping a neighbor in need."

"Oh, no, I can't ask you to do that for me," Clay protests. "We're fine. But thanks for the offer."

"You're sure?" Putty walked past the car on his way to the doorbell; the front end is crunched like a soda can.

"Absolutely! It still runs, and the driver's door sticks a little, but it could be worse, right?"

Putty can't imagine tooling around with his own car looking like that, but Clay isn't the one with a red-hot coupe and custom license plates.

"Why don't you want the money, Dad?" Orel asks.

"Because we don't need it," Clay tells him. "I'm sure there's someone else in Moralton who could use that money more than we do."

"I never thought I'd see the day," Putty chuckles, amused. "Orel, your dad's a changed man, huh?"

Orel half-smiles, but he seems to recognize the levity in Putty's tone. "He sure is trying!"

From the kitchen, Bloberta scoffs.

A little while later, Bloberta catches Putty after he makes his goodbyes. She shuts the front door behind them and says, "You don't really believe him, do you?"

Putty wonders where this is going. "Clay? Yeah, I guess I do."

"So just because he says the right things and won't take your money, suddenly he's cured?" Bloberta's frown is ungiving. "You can't  _cure_  what Clay is, Reverend."

"I'd call it a miracle before I call it a cure."

Bloberta shakes her head. "Whatever it is, it's a lie. People don't change." She takes a step closer, pressing her body against him. Putty swoons but backs away; he's been with another man's wife before and found the whole experience nerve-racking. "Don't you think if Clay was able to change, he would have done it already? Do you think he would have needed this"—she struggles to find the proper words—"holy intervention to set him straight?"

Putty shrugs. "I don't know if you can really understand a near-death experience until you've had one."

Bloberta scoffs. "Oh please. He didn't have a near-death experience. He made up this whole story about meeting God so everyone will give him a pass for all the shitty things he's done."

Putty supposes that's possible, but unlikely, since Clay would have to follow through and be kind himself. "If it's all a lie that makes him feel better, who cares? At least he's practicing what he preaches."

"But he's wrapping God into his lies."

"Look, we can keep doing things the way we've been doing for the entire span of human history—which hasn't worked, in case you didn't notice—or we can be a little kinder to our fellow man. Is the latter  _really_  so bad?"

Bloberta ignores this and segues into what Putty believes was her goal all along: "I'm going to leave him, Rod. There's no reason you have to be alone. I can help you."

He knows her use of his first name is manipulation, but his body still responds in its usual manner. He moves away to put distance between them. "Hey, hey, slow down. Adultery's still a sin."

Bloberta gives him a look that says he's the stupidest man alive. "But it wasn't a sin when you slept with Florence Papermouth?"

Putty feels the heat rising in his face like mercury in a thermometer. "What?"  _How does she know about that_?

As if reading his mind, Bloberta says, "Don't look so surprised. People talk, you know."

Putty supposes she's right; even Clay seemed to know about it last Easter, but that was more dumb luck than any sort of intuition or deduction. "Alright, yeah, I've made mistakes. Sure. But people  _can_  change, Bloberta. If we don't believe in that, what's the point?"

She stands there, unable (or perhaps unwilling) to respond. Putty steps down the walkway and says, "Thank you again for a lovely dinner."

* * *

Bloberta finds Clay's newfound sainthood to be a colossal joke. He has been nothing but rotten since she's known him. What makes him think he can undo the past thirteen years like hitting a reset button on the universe? Watching Orel and Reverend Putty buy into this nonsense makes her sick. Because Bloberta knows Clay's true nature, knows he will eventually revert to his old ways once Orel accepts this transformation. And then they're right back where they started, only with the bitter knowledge that Clay tried to better himself but failed miserably.

Bloberta considers this as Clay's epitaph:  _Here lies Clay Puppington: he tried and failed._

She comes by this understanding honestly; her father drank himself into an early grave, and while he never had enough of a backbone to stand up to Bloberta's domineering mother, his dependence on alcohol mirrors Clay's own. Even Bloberta herself kept a full flask underneath her mattress until she saw what loathsome behavior a few drinks coaxed out of Clay. She channeled her frustration into cleaning (a far healthier vice, if she has any word on the matter), but Clay never took stock of his life and realized his addiction poisoned everyone around him.

_Until now._

Even if Bloberta doesn't believe Clay's outlandish tale, she can't deny he has taken great strides to turn his life around. While experience tells her it's all an act, she can't shake the feeling that Clay  _might_  be genuine. It's a dreadful feeling, borne from the realization that he has done this without her help. Clay's managed to last a good deal of time without a drink (she's certain to check for the smell of alcohol on him after work), and he's managed without anyone cheering him on. The good Reverend may stand in Clay's corner, but Bloberta doubts Putty's commitment to the cause. When the chips are down, Putty tends to bet on the house.

She has watched Clay play his role of Reformed Dad to the letter. He teaches Orel to play pool. When Orel brings Doughy over to show off the game room, Clay offers them kid-friendly drinks (apple juice, Bloberta recalls with a shudder). He calls the boys "sport" and "son" and "pal." And Clay always offers to do the dishes, like he doesn't know cleaning is the hinge on which Bloberta's sanity relies.

But even after Clay tossed out the liquor in the parlor, Bloberta suspects he still has a few stashed bottles. Like the flask under Bloberta's childhood mattress, Clay probably keeps three fingers' worth of whiskey hidden in the bookshelves of his study, or a half-bottle locked away in his gun vault. So while Clay is at work one afternoon, Bloberta sneaks into his study to search for hidden treasure. She finds a bottle of Jack Daniel's taped to the undercarriage of Clay's chair.

"Sneaky, sneaky," Bloberta chides, pulling the bottle free from the web of tape that kept it anchored there. She smiles to herself, feeling righteous and justified over her discovery.  _This must be how Fran feels all the time_ , she thinks. Clay can't be too serious about abstaining if he still keeps a stash; he might have a bottle or two in his desk at work, too. And it's possible he's been sneaking sips here or there. Bloberta can't watch him every minute of the day. Of course he would learn her "sniff schedule" and build his cheat sips around that. At work he could chew gum or swish mouthwash to rid his breath of the smell.

Has he been fooling her this whole time? Impossible to say for sure. But just as she was right about Clay's stash, her suspicions of his deception may be right on the money as well. She knew him briefly as a clean-cut, God-loving free spirit (almost, she realizes now, a peek into the future at an older Orel), but she has known him for almost two decades as a man married to the bottle rather than her. "A tiger cannot change his stripes," her mother used to say, and that must be true of this particular tiger.

It  _must_  be. Because the alternative, that Clay has made such grand changes without her help, is unthinkable. Impossible, even. The catalyst for their loveless marriage was the help Bloberta could provide for him; without his need for it, where does that leave her? Would Clay actually  _divorce_  her?

_(Why don't you just go? Take the kids, or leave them with me if you'd rather be on your own.)_

He sounded as if he meant to leave, or wanted her gone, at least. Clay's near-death experience seems not only to have given him a new lease on life, but a terrifying sense of independence as well. They agreed to stay together for the kids, but that had been almost a year ago, well before Clay's application for sainthood.

 _Times, they are a-changing,_  Bloberta thinks. _If things continue this way, you'll be on your own. You know what the answer is, don't you?_

Of course she does. She looks at the confiscated bottle of whiskey in her hand and remembers her first "date" with Clay. Back then, one drink had been enough to tip him over the edge. Would that still hold true now? Yes, Bloberta thinks it just might.

* * *

That evening, both Orel and Clay offer to help with the cooking, but Mom isn't having it. She shoos them out of the kitchen, so Orel ends up corralling Shapey and Block into the game room to play darts. Clay stays in the living room, smoking his pipe and reading the paper until dinner is ready. Mom calls them for dinner, and she's pouring Clay his usual mug of coffee when Orel takes his place at the table.

"Something smells good," Clay says as he enters the kitchen. He moves in to kiss Mom's cheek, but she turns away.

Once the five of them are seated, Clay leads the family in prayer: "Dear Lord, thank You for the gifts which we are about to receive, and for the blessings in our everyday lives. My beautiful wife"—Orel peeks one eye open to see Mom scowling at Clay—"my bright, kind-hearted sons, and a supportive community. In Jesus' name, amen."

"Amen," Orel says with cheer.

Dinner goes on in silence, which strikes Orel as strange. There was so much conversation when Reverend Putty was here. Maybe his parents don't have anything to talk about anymore. Orel supposes that married couples run out of conversation at some point, but it's awfully sad, and he hopes it never happens to him when he gets married.

"Dad, do you think Reverend Putty could have dinner with us again?" Orel asks, trying to get some table talk going.

"Oh, I don't know," Clay says. "Why don't we ask him Sunday after church?"

Orel thinks that's a good idea; he doesn't know why his mother looks upset by that. She seemed to enjoy the last time they had Putty over. To Orel's left, Shapey and Block whisper to each other and giggle.

Clay takes a long swallow of coffee. He smacks his lips, makes a face, peers into the mug as if he suspects a spider might crawl out of it.

Mom watches him with intrigue. "Something wrong, dear?"

"This coffee tastes different," Clay murmurs. His tongue does something funny in his mouth. He takes another sip, this one slower and more deliberate. "What did you put in this?" Clay slams the mug onto the table. It makes a solid _thump_  sound, and its contents slosh over his knuckles. He barely notices.

"Oh, just a bit of this and that," Mom says in a tone of voice that makes Orel uneasy—a mixture of slyness, good humor, and anger. "Why? Don't you like it?"

Clay surveys the table, and his gaze settles on Orel. "Orel, keep an eye on your brothers. I need to speak with your mother—in my study."

For the first time that Orel can remember, those words don't call up the usual response of fear and dread. Instead, he nods and watches Clay lead Mom up the stairs, pulling her along by the sleeve of her dress. "What are you going to do?" Mom sneers. "Hit me? Make sure you don't leave marks! That would ruin your squeaky-clean reputation!"

Orel thinks he hears hate in his mother's voice. In fact, that's something he's heard a lot in her voice this past year. Maybe it had always been there, and Orel, growing and maturing, became attuned to it. But he can't deny that Mom has seemed particularly hateful with Clay ever since the car accident. In math class Ms. Sculptham talked about inverse graphs, and Orel thinks Mom's response to Clay is the inverse of Orel's own. As Orel has come to forgive and appreciate Clay, Mom has only grown more resentful.

Orel feels a great sense of foreboding, understanding that this argument between his parents will be different than the rest.

"Stay here, you guys," Orel tells Shapey and Block, who are too busy dragging tater tots through the ketchup puddles on their plates to pay him any mind. Orel creeps up the stairs and down the hall, careful not to step on the creaky parts of the floor. He passes the open doors of his bedroom, his parents' room, Shapey and Block's room, then he approaches the closed door of his father's study. He presses his ear to the crack and hears voices.

"That was a lousy, under-handed thing to do, Bloberta!" Clay shouts.

"I didn't make you do anything you weren't already planning to do! Why else did you keep a bottle of whiskey taped underneath that chair?" Mom argues back.

"You snuck in here and went through my things? What is going on with you?"

"Me? You're the one putting on this holier-than-thou act all over town, like you're Mr. Perfect! It's horseshit, Clay, but no one else sees it thanks to your big lie about meeting God."

Orel gasps. He's never heard his mother swear before.

"It's not a lie!" Clay protests. "Why would I lie about something like that?"

Mom laughs in the way adults do when something is darkly amusing. "Why  _wouldn't_  you? All this nonsense about meeting God and being kind to each other is free pass for you, Clay, to undo the fact that you're a self-absorbed alcoholic who neglected his wife and children."

"So we're back to this again? You told me there was nothing I could do! I can't even earn my redemption from you, because you won't let me! How is that fair?"

"Hasn't anyone ever told you? Life isn't fair."

"You know what I think?" Clay says, speaking with a cool certainty that Orel knows very well. "I think you're afraid of me being better, because it means you have to change too. Now you're feeling the pressure to be better. But if you can get me drunk again and lie to yourself that it was always going to happen that way, well, that's a free pass for you, isn't it?"

"You  _shot_  Orel!" Mom bursts out.

"And how is it he can forgive me for that, but you'll hang it over my head for the rest of my life?"

"Because Orel doesn't know any better!" The vitriol in Mom's voice makes Orel cringe away from the door. "He wants to go through life turning the other cheek and forgiving everyone who hurts him. Is that the kind of son you want to raise, Clay? A doormat?"

"I'd rather him be a doormat than get somebody drunk because he's afraid of being alone," Clay says. His tone is a deadly caress.

"What do you know about being alone?" Mom cries, and Orel hears the tears in her voice.

There's a long pause, and Orel holds his breath. Through the rapid thump of his heartbeat in his ears, he can pick up Mom's quiet sniffles and sobs.

When Clay speaks again, his voice is still calm and cool, but there's a gentleness that wasn't there before. "My offer still stands, you know. I think it would be best for both of us."

 _What offer?_  Orel wonders.

"And what about the kids? Did you ever stop to think about what might be best for them?" Mom asks.

"Why, sure. They can stay here with me. Orel's becoming more responsible; he can look after Shapey and Block until I get home from work. We'll do just fine."

"No! No, you can have Orel—you've already ruined him—but I get the other two."

 _You've already ruined him._ Orel didn't know words could hurt so much.

"Then I suppose it's fitting you take the two that aren't even mine," Clay fires back. "I'll write you a check in the morning. It should be enough to keep you afloat for a month or two."

Orel comes to understand what's happening here, and it fills him with all sorts of feelings he can't untangle. There is sadness, relief, guilt, fear…

Feeling as though he has aged forty years, Orel shuffles down the hall and the stairs. He takes his seat at the dinner table, where Shapey and Block giggle as though all is still right with the world. He looks at his brothers and smiles.

* * *

The following morning, Mom takes Shapey, Block, and two packed suitcases along on a bus out of town. "You're the man of the house now, Orel," she tells him while he waits with her at the bus stop. "Try to do a better job of it than your father."

"Why do you have to go?" Orel asks.

Mom sighs a tired sound. "Because your father and I don't get along anymore. Sometimes people get married even though they don't love each other."

"Why?"

"They think the being-in-love part might come eventually. Or they think it's the right thing to do. Or maybe they're afraid of being alone." Mom doesn't look at Orel when she says this, just stares out at the street, waiting for the bus that will take her away and out of his life. "Sometimes it's all those things."

"Oh…" Orel looks down at his shoes. "Where are you going?"

"We'll stay with my mother. You remember Nana, don't you?"

Orel recalls visiting his grandmother when he was very young, but those memories are hazy and unreliable. He takes his mother's word for it that they met.

"Maybe you can come visit on the weekends."

Orel asks the question that's been bothering him since last night: "Why did you say Dad ruined me?"

Mom's eyes go wide, and if she had been holding anything she would have dropped it. "What?" She blinks again and again, as though trying to comprehend what he's said. "Where did you hear that?"

"Last night. I heard you and Dad talking." Orel glances away, afraid he might earn a scolding for eavesdropping or some other sin of which he's unaware.

"Oh, Orel, that was just— That wasn't about you. That was meant to hurt your father."

"But you didn't ask me to come with you…" Orel realizes his mother might actively hold his paternity against him, as though Orel himself had any choice in the matter.

Mom's expression melts into a worried frown. "Your father needs a reason to wake up in the morning. He wanted you and your brothers to live at home with him, but that would leave me all alone."

"You're really afraid of that, aren't you?"

She doesn't answer, but she doesn't need to.

When the bus arrives, Orel hugs his mother and brothers before they board. Shapey and Block sit near the window, and Orel waves to them as the bus departs. He stands there on the curb, watching over half of his family disappear. After waiting for a minute or two (perhaps hoping his mother might change her mind and come running back), he turns and heads home.

Walking back to the house, Orel sees Reverend Putty's convertible rolling up alongside him. "Hey, Orel, need a ride?" Putty asks, slowing to a stop.

"Sure. Thanks!" Orel slides into the passenger seat, and the car starts moving again.

"Why the long face, kid?"

Orel didn't realize his melancholy was obvious. "My mom left with my brothers. I don't think her and my dad are gonna live together anymore."

"Hold the phone!" Putty almost slams on the brake. "Your parents are getting divorced?"

"I don't know. Maybe."

"Oh, jeez. Would some ice cream help cheer you up?"

Orel doubts it, but he understands Putty is trying to help in the only way he knows how. So Orel nods and says, "I think so."

Putty takes him to Sal's Corner Store for a root beer float. Orel sits at the counter and, in between sips, tells Putty about Mom's fight with Clay and her departure with Shapey and Block. "She said I was ruined," Orel repeats when he's finished, and he can feel tears prickling at the corners of his eyes. "I think that's why she didn't take me with her."

"Orel," Putty sighs, his brow furrowed. "No, you're not ruined. But your mother, well, she seems to think your greatest sin is being your father's son. I mean, you look more like your dad than your brothers do, right?"

Orel nods slowly and takes a long sip of his float.

"That's why she didn't bring you along; you remind her too much of your dad. But that's not  _your_  fault. That's on her."

"It still hurts."

"I know." Putty gives him a quick pat on the shoulder. "But you're allowed to be upset. You've been through things no kid should have to go through. This town is"—he sighs again—"like quicksand. By the time you realize you're sinking, it's too late. Promise me you'll get out of Moralton as soon as you can."

"But why can't I stay and make it better?"

Putty scoffs. "That's a fool's errand, kid. You're better off going someplace else."

"But I thought people were being nicer to each other 'cause of your sermon and Dad's meeting with God," Orel says.

"That's the problem. Your father's the one who met God, and everybody else is just taking his word for it. But over time they go back to their old ways. It takes a great, monumental experience to change a person for good, Orel."

That eventual slide back to the status quo was what Orel imagined would happen with Clay. "Like dying and meeting God?"

Putty nods, then reconsiders. "Now don't go trying to give everyone in town a near-death experience."

Okay, so Orel considered it for a half-second.

"My point is, this town could use more goodwill," Putty says. "So if you or your dad ever need anything, let me know."

* * *

Life goes on in the Puppington household even in Bloberta's absence. After school, Orel takes on the task of keeping house (though not as obsessive as his mother). Clay finds it easier to stay optimistic when Bloberta's not smothering him with negativity. At some point—he isn't sure when, exactly—Orel stops looking at Clay as though his father is a dog that might bite him.

Initially Clay rejected the reverend's offer for help, because he didn't want Moralton aware of his marital split. "They're going to find out sooner or later," Putty told him one afternoon in the mayor's office. "You think no one will notice how over half of your family's not showing up to Sunday services anymore?" Clay knew that this was true, and if he didn't get ahead of the story, some of the town's more  _creative_  citizens might invent one for him (Fran Censordoll came to mind). It would be easy to cast Clay as the villain in the disappearance of Bloberta and her two illegitimate sons. So he allowed Reverend Putty to raise the topic during the following Sunday's sermon—the focus of which was, of course, adultery.

The months pass, and Orel seems to need his guidance less and less. Clay decides to extend an olive branch to his own father and try to make amends for their years-long period of terse silence. He dials the number, and the sound of his father's voice through the phone calls up clear, vivid memories of times when they were actually happy together: Arthur and Clay playing catch in the front yard, Arthur taking him to the zoo, riding in Arthur's truck with the smell of tobacco and peppermint throughout the cab.

Clay isn't aware that his eyes have filled with tears until he tries to speak: "It's me."

"Clay? What's the matter? Did something happen to Orel?" Arthur's voice has aged in the eight years since they last spoke to each other.

"No, I just—Well…" Clay tells his father about Bloberta's departure, about the car accident, and about meeting God.

"My God! You're telling me you almost died?"

"I  _did_  die. I mean, only for a little while, but it was enough."

Arthur, the everlasting atheist, doesn't comment on the conversation with God. His focus stays on the family. "Well, that's a shame, Clay. And it's a damn shame about your wife, too. I truly mean it. I didn't know the woman, but I'm sure you cared for her."

Clay doesn't bother correcting him. "I'm more concerned about Orel. I think he's growing up too fast now that she's gone."

"He's taken on a lot of responsibility for a boy his age. You know what that's like."

Clay does. They're dancing around the subject of his mother's death in a way that makes him uncomfortable. But Clay doesn't want to poke at that open wound, not when Arthur might still blame him almost thirty years later.

Arthur starts to say something, then he coughs a raspy noise that sounds like broken glass rattling in his lungs. When his coughing eases off, he mumbles, "Damn cigarettes."

Clay feels a cold hand squeeze his heart. "Are you alright?"

"Don't you worry about me. Just a tickle in my throat, is all."

Clay suspects his father is hiding something, but he won't push.

"Anyway," Arthur starts again, "you got a good boy, that Orel. All he needs is someone to be there for him."

Clay can't resist the urge to snap back. "Like you were for me?"

Arthur sighs. "I admit I shit the bed on that one, and I'll go to my grave regretting how things were after Angela…" A raspy sigh. "Knowing what I know now, I would have done a lot of things differently."

"Wouldn't we all?"

"Can you find it in your heart to forgive me?"

Clay wonders if that nasty cough has anything to do with why Arthur is so keen on forgiveness. He remembers time after time when Arthur denied him love and affection after his mother passed. How do you forgive something like that? And isn't it fucking lousy for Arthur to apologize when he might be preparing to meet his maker? An apology now does nothing to reverse the hurtful realization Clay learned at Orel's age: no one cares about you and never will.

But hypocricy is a Protestant's stock and trade, one from which Clay's still trying to shake free. After all, didn't Clay himself work towards redemption after his near-death experience? What makes Arthur's situation any different? Because Arthur is the "real" villain? Orel might beg to differ on that one, but he chose mercy over wrath. Isn't that all goodness is?

Clay recalls Orel's words of wisdom:  _It's like Reverend Putty said: we need to be compassionate the way Jesus was. Jesus said we're supposed to forgive people almost five hundred times when they hurt us._

He can't offer full, vocalized forgiveness yet, but Clay says, "Y'know, Dad, why don't you stop in sometime and see us? We've got a spare bed."

It's a start, he thinks.

* * *

About a week later, Arthur calls to say he's interested in spending a weekend with Clay and Orel. "It'll be nice to see you two again," he says. He sounds in better spirits, but there's still that mucous-y rattle in his lungs.

"Yeah," Clay agrees. His father might be dying. A year ago, this news would have delighted Clay, filled him with a "serves you right" indignation. But now, at the precipice of reconciliation (or at least acceptance of what has passed between them), he feels a choking sense of urgency to establish the kind of father-son relationship he always wanted.

Orel, of course, is ecstatic that Arthur will be visiting. "Hot dog!" he cries after Clay tells him over breakfast. "You're really gonna let Grandpa come visit? Did he forgive you?"

Clay frowns. "Well, no, but that's not something we talked about."

"Oh… Well, what did you talk about?"

"I told him about my accident, about your mother, about how you've been growing up so fast." Clay hopes Orel doesn't blame him in some way for the latter. "He's very proud of you."

Orel grins. "Gosh…"

"Speaking of your mother," Clay says, "she might have to take a rain-check on this weekend."

Since Bloberta's departure, Orel has been visiting her every Saturday. Clay hasn't spoken with her much aside from their brief talks when he drops Orel off and picks him up.

"I miss her…" Orel says, keeping his eyes on his plate as he pokes at his pancakes. "But… it's kind of a relief, I guess, to have her gone?" He meets his father's eyes, as though seeking permission for this opinion.

Clay understands, but he wants Orel to know it's okay to feel and voice such things. "Why's that?"

"Well…" Orel's face heats up. "I don't know how to explain it, but the house feels different now that it's just us. After your accident, it felt… kind of dangerous when you and Mom were in the same room."

"That's called tension, Orel, and it's what develops when people aren't happy together. Sometimes you don't even notice it's there, because you get used to it. It's only after the other person is gone that you realize how much that tension was a part of your life."

Orel nods. "But you made the tension go away, sort of, with me. How come she couldn't do that with you?"

"Now there's a question for the ages," Clay says with an amused, bitter laugh. "And I don't know what to tell you. Some people find it easier to blame everyone else instead of changing themselves. I know I did. But God told me to straighten up and fly right, so I'm trying my best."

* * *

Over the course of his sluggish eight-hour workdays, Clay has plenty of time to think. He considers his past, the wrongs still left to right. He hasn't spoken to Daniel Stopframe since last Christmas when things all went to shit. And while it might be difficult to avoid your ex in a small town like Moralton (especially when said ex is your son's athletic coach), Clay has managed to do so only through sheer luck.

In truth, Clay has been too busy to think about Daniel. Since the accident, Clay's life has been a whirlwind of atonement and rebuilding the broken relationships with his family. His reunion with Arthur was shaky at first, neither of them knowing what to say to each other. But by the end of that weekend, Clay found himself inviting Arthur back. These casual invitations evolved into a routine, with Arthur visiting on Sunday afternoons. In the last few months, Clay's noticed a slow decline in Arthur's health, though the old man would never admit it. Clay wonders if he should ask Arthur to move in with him and Orel. Now that Shapey and Block live with Bloberta, the house has a spare bedroom...

But now, Clay finds himself thinking about Daniel. Daniel Stopframe is the final stitch in Clay's repentance quilt, the last stone left unturned.

_If your marriage is so unsatisfying, get a divorce and find someone who cares for you. Maybe Coach Stopframe will give you a second chance, too._

God told him that, and Clay finds the thought invigorating. There's a version of his life that was meant to be spent with Daniel; maybe this is that version, and things have finally clicked into place like interlocking gears.

After work, he leaves Town Hall and stops by the school, figuring Daniel might be there. But when Clay peers through the tiny window of Daniel's office door, the lights are out, and there's no one inside. He considers calling Daniel's home phone, just to see if he picks up, but decides against it. No, it would be much too tempting to have this conversation via phone, and he doesn't want Daniel evading him once Clay's intentions are clear. At least in person Clay can chase him down.

He finds Daniel on a barstool at Forghetty's. Clay watches from outside and feels the first flickers of thirst in his throat. He wonders if that thirst is for Daniel or the drink. Clay lingers there—he doesn't know how long—wondering how to face Daniel after fucking up so badly. He decides to go inside before indecision paralyzes him.

The bar still sounds and smells just like it did the last night he was here. The night of the accident. A few patrons turn and look at Clay as he walks in, and he sees the surprise on their faces. Among these faces is Dr. Potterswheel.

"I thought you dried out," Potterswheel says, eyeing Clay as though he might be a dog turd left on a nice rug.

"I'm just here to talk with someone," Clay says, but even he wonders.

At the sound of Clay's voice, Daniel turns around to look at him. Their eyes meet, and Clay feels a frog in his throat. Before he can properly freak out, his feet carry him to the empty stool beside Daniel. Clay sits there, wishing he had rehearsed what he might say.

Dolly, the bartender, studies Clay with curiosity. "What can I get you?" she asks, as though she always expected him to end up back here.

"Nothing for me, thanks." Clay tries a smile, but it's weak. He'd forgotten about Dolly, forgotten how he'd made an ass of himself that fateful night by sniping at her with cruelty.

Dolly quirks an eyebrow and gives him a look that seems to say  _I'll be over here in case you change your mind._ She tends to a patron on the other side of the bar, and now Clay and Daniel have a bit of privacy.

"Hey," Clay says. Mr. Smooth.

"Hey yourself," Daniel says, but his words lack their usual playfulness. "Haven't seen you in a while."

Clay nods, as if to acknowledge that, yes, it's certainly been a long time. "I've… been busy."

"So I've heard." Everything Daniel says sounds like a double entendre, but now Clay knows that's not on purpose. Because the way Daniel's looking at him says there is no flirtation intended here. "What's it like to be reborn?"

"A lot of hard work." Eager to shift the topic, Clay asks, "Orel's not giving you any trouble, is he?"

"No, he's doing just fine," Daniel says with a nod. "He lost a bit of speed, but it doesn't seem to bother him."

The limp, Clay recalls with regret.

"Maybe you're doing right by him," Daniel says. He swivels on the barstool to face Clay.

"I'm trying. How have things been with you?"

"Same old, same old." Daniel swirls the drink in his glass before taking a swallow. He holds the glass out to Clay, inviting him to take a sip, but Clay declines. Daniel smiles, but there's something sinister behind it. "Oh, come on, Clay. You don't really expect me to buy this squeaky-clean act, do you?"

 _Act_. Again, here's someone who believes all the good Clay's done is an elaborate show put on for the sake of his own guilty conscience.

"It's not an act, Daniel, and that's… that's why I came."

"Is it?"

"I wanted to apologize for… well, you know."

"No, I don't. Do you mean the part where you dragged Orel home because you were jealous he was spending time with me over you?" Daniel asks, his voice carrying a flicker of anger beneath his blasé tone. "The part where you compared my kindness to him with rape? Or the part where you showed how pathetic you are by begging for a second chance with me in front of your wife and kids?"

 _Are those my only choices,_ Clay wonders. "That's a pretty good start," he says with an uneasy chuckle. "But I'm sorry for it. All of it. I wasn't a good person back then. And maybe I'm still not, but I'm trying, and that's more than I can say for Past-Clay. I know I hurt you, and I'm sorry."

"What do you want from me, Clay?" Daniel asks, as though he suspects ulterior motives. And, okay, he's not wrong about that, but Clay could have worse intentions than forgiveness.

"You—you heard about Bloberta?"

Daniel nods again. His eyes narrow, as if he doesn't like where this is going.

"Well, I thought maybe you and I could get to know each other again. Start over, y'know?"

Daniel scoffs a bitter laugh. "You're an asshole," he says, turning back to the bar and lifting the glass to his mouth.

"Wh—what—Why does that get you so mad?"

"You've got everyone fooled with this meeting God crap, but not me. You're a politician. Lying is your business, and you found a neat little way to exploit the stupid people in this town by telling them they're spitting in God's face if they don't forgive you."

Clay feels like he's drowning, being pulled down into the undertow of Daniel's anger.

"Bloberta's smarter than I gave her credit for," Daniel says with an edge that makes Clay wary.

"It's not a lie," Clay says, trying to manufacture some indignation of his own, but he sounds pitiful.

"Really? You expect me to believe God gave  _you_  a second chance over some teenager killed in a car wreck, or a baby left to starve by negligent parents? No, it's Clay Puppington of Moralton, Statesota who gets that coveted second chance!" Daniel scoffs again and finishes his drink, setting it on the counter with a little too much force. "Bullshit."

"Well, you know, God works in—"

"Finishing that sentence with 'mysterious ways' would be a serious fucking mistake."

Clay decides to let that one die on the vine.

"People don't change," Daniel says, parroting Bloberta's rhetoric.

"Then why didn't I die in that accident if I wasn't meant to come back and do good?"

"You weren't meant to do anything. There is no God, Clay. The world is just random chaos, but people can't function without some kind of meaning, so we call the good things fate or God's will and the bad things the devil's work."

Clay looks away, because everything about this hurts: Daniel's hard stare, the anger in his voice, the possible truth in his words. Is it possible Clay's experience with God was a hallucination? Some kind of false memory created in his brain to give his accident meaning?

"But I'll play along," Daniel continues. "Let's say you actually did meet God. If you were really a good person, an imaginary deity wouldn't have to tell you to do good. But you needed the threat of eternal damnation to treat people with kindness. You're only sorry because you lost your favorite toy."

Is that how Clay's apology comes off? He sits there, bewildered. This definitely wasn't how he saw this conversation going.

Daniel drops a few dollars onto the counter. "I'll be civil to you in passing, but otherwise, I never want to see you again." He rises from the barstool and exits the pub, leaving Clay in stunned, devastated silence.

Dolly comes by to take Daniel's empty glass. "Break-ups suck," she tells Clay with pity.

Clay nods, hearing her as though from underwater. He doesn't understand how he keeps losing Daniel over and over again. What, Clay wonders, is the point of being a better person if your mistakes keep getting thrown back in your face? Why would anyone want to change when redemption is impossible? On some level, Clay knew there were things you can never make right, things you will always carry with you, but in this moment he has a profound understanding of this fact.

He lingers at the bar, his mind numbingly blank. His tongue thirsts for a swig of the amber liquid Dolly's pouring into the glasses of patrons around him. He knows he should resist, but the more he thinks about it, the more he wonders why he bothers with sobriety. One little drink won't hurt, and even if that one drink turns into two or three or twelve, who cares? From the way Bloberta and Daniel have treated him, it's clear he'll never be able to atone for the things he's done. The only reason Orel has forgiven him is

( _Because Orel doesn't know any better!)_

because he's too kind. Orel might be naive, but he isn't stupid; he understands he must make peace with Clay if they're going to live together. Don't shit where you eat, as the saying goes.

"Clay," Dolly sighs, standing on the opposite side of the bar with her hands on her hips, "either shit or get off the pot, alright? I've got paying customers here."

If Clay's going to throw a huge middle-finger in the face of his eight-month-long sobriety, he ought to do it in secret. He leaves the bar feeling more alone than ever, despite the raucous laughter and clinking of bottles coming from inside.

At a loss for anyplace else to go in such a state, Clay finds himself guided towards the church. But instead of speaking with God, he's looking for Reverend Putty. Clay finds the reverend in his quarters at the back of the church. The door is ajar, and Putty's looking down at his desk, reading a book. Clay gives a few light knocks on the door. Putty looks up, sees Clay, and his smile fades into concern.

"What happened to you?" Putty asks. "Something wrong with Orel?"

Clay hasn't seen his own reflection after the conversation with Daniel, but he must look pretty bad considering the half-grimace on Putty's face. "No, I just… I screwed up. As usual."

"We make mistakes, Clay. They don't make us. You wanna talk about it?"

There's an empty chair in front of Putty's desk, and Clay drops into it. The world still feels unreal, the way survivors must feel when they climb out of the bomb shelter after an atomic blast.

But, no, Clay doesn't want to talk about it, doesn't want to relive that terrible stretch of time that's still so, so fresh. He looks at Putty, trying to decipher the expression he's wearing. "Am I a good person?"

Putty arches an eyebrow.

"I… lost someone today because he didn't think I was good enough," Clay continues. "I don't know what else I'm supposed to do. I lost Bloberta, which, okay, I'm not shedding too many tears over, but she said the same thing he did: that people can't change. Maybe being good just isn't in me, you know? Because if it was, would I need God to tell me to do it?"

Putty removes his glasses, rubs his eyes, then replaces his spectacles. "Clay, does this guy even  _matter_?"

"Yes," Clay says, emphatic. "I mean, well—" He pauses, rubbing the back of his neck and refusing to meet Putty's gaze. He isn't sure how much to tell about his relationship with Daniel, isn't sure the good reverend is very tolerant of such things. "I loved him." And there it is. Clay waits for some kind of reaction.

"And?" Putty says, urging him to continue, like this is old news.

"And I thought he loved me too." Clay doesn't realize that's the worst part until he says it out loud. "Or that he  _could_  if I knew how to"—he searches for the words—"excavate the part of him that used to like me. Because he did care about me before. He would have thrown it in my face if the past was all a big lie. So that means he just… got over me." No, that's definitely the worst part.

Putty nods in affirmation, the way a therapist might. "So because one person doesn't like you—"

"Two," Clay reminds him.

Putty rolls his eyes. "Okay,  _two_. Because they don't like you, you think all the progress you've made means nothing?"

"I've burned so many bridges," Clay says in realization.

"The good news is there's always more bridges."

Clay thinks that an interesting way to look at it. "It doesn't bother you? That I was in love with a man?"

Putty smiles sadly. "Give me some credit. You're not the only one who's changed around here." Clay notices how appealing Putty's eyes are. He prefers the eyes over the more salacious body parts. Of course, there's the puritanical angle, but if eyes are indeed the window to one's soul, Clay wants to peek at a soul that makes him feel born again. Bloberta had no such warmth, but the closer Clay looks, he thinks he sees it behind Putty's wise and damaged smile.

Putty says, "Y'know, a wise man once told me a lot of our problems start when we don't appreciate what we have. As long as you've got friends, family, or faith, you can't be lonely. And buddy, you've got all of those. You're luckier than most of us in this sorry old town."

Clay supposes that's true. He has his faith in God, renewed and rejuvenated after the accident. He has Orel, who has mercifully given him a chance to make amends. He has his father, whose illness has softened his edges. And, he realizes, he has Reverend Putty, someone he never really noticed or thought about before, but someone who has stuck with Clay all the same.

"I guess you're right." Clay stands up and wipes his palms on his thighs. "I knew coming here was a good idea. Thanks, Reverend."

"What's all this formal 'reverend' stuff? Just call me Rod."

Clay smiles and says that he will. As he's opening the door, Putty says, "Hey, uh, Clay?"

Clay turns around, sees the shy flush that has covered Putty's cheeks.

"Would you want to get lunch or dinner sometime?" Putty asks, glancing away as soon as the question's out of his mouth. "I mean, I know you're busy with Orel and your dad, but maybe we could—"

"Rod." Clay sees where this is going. "I'd like that."


End file.
